Let’s cover some basic essentials to planning and publishing your blog. I will classify 3 categories of bloggers in this lesson. There are many more “types” of blogs that may fall into one of the 3 categories and these categories themselves are not all inclusive.

These categories are:

• Personal Bloggers
• Organizational Bloggers
• Business Bloggers

Personal bloggers tend to publish articles that voice their opinion on a wide array of topics and events. Personal bloggers typically find pleasure in documenting their personal lives, ranting, stream of consciousness type entries reflecting moods and mind sets and publishing a variety of themes or interests.

Organizational bloggers use blogs to communicate both internally within their organizations but they also may communicate externally with the public as well. An organizational blog will facilitate internal communications between colleagues, employees and other organizational personnel. An organizational blog ...   more »

How To Blog 101 - What is Blogging and Why Should I Blog?

In this article your will learn what blogging really is and why you should start blogging. Unless you've been comletely internet free for the past several months to a year, you have probably heard about these "blog" sites but you may not know what a blog is. Or perhaps you know what a blog is but you want to learn more about how blogs are being used and if blogging is something you could benefit from. In this article you will learn exactly what blogging is and what blogging is not and why you should or should not start blogging.

I will attempt to dymistify the definition of blogging if you absolutely aren't quite sure what a blog really is. A blog is generally defined as an online journal that is updated frequently and where your articles are listed in reverse chronological order when they are published. That means your articles are published with the most recent article listed first in date and time order.

What Is A Blog?
The term "blog" is derived from the term "Weblog" or web log. In the early days of blogging circa mid to late 1990's, web logs were used to track updates and references to other resources on the internet. Weblogs, as journals were also used as a stream of consciousness publishing tool where you could share and comment on anything and everything under the sun. As a results and to this day, there are lots of blogs that publish opinionated commentary as diverse in tone as there are a diversity of topics to talk about.

A blog is technically a content management system (CMS) albeit a more simplified version of one. A CMS allows you to easily publish to a website and manage content without having to deal with having to know how to program code. Blog publishing software provides you with a graphical user interface (GUI) for point and click publishing of your content. Your blog software will require you to perform intial easy-to-do setup and configuration so that it will know how to automically organize your published content in the future. After that, you can publish quickly and instantly using your blog software editor that is built into your blog publishing software.    more »

Okay, I'm going to write a series of "Getting Started..." articles on how to blog. This will be a review of fundamentals and here is what will be covered.

How To Blog 101 - What is Blogging and Why Should I Blog?

In this article your will learn what blogging really is and why you should start blogging. Unless you've been comletely internet free for the past several months, you have probably heard about these "blog" sites but you may not know what a blog is. Or perhaps you know what a blog is but you want to learn more about how blogs are being used and if blogging is something you could benefit from. In this article you will learn exactly what blogging is and what blogging is not and why you should or should not start blogging.


How To Blog 102 - Planning Your Blog

In this article you will learn a few basic essentials to planning and publishing a blog. You learn about different types of blogs and how to determine your own personal blogging style for the highest level of enjoyment when you start blogging. Properly planning your blog is critical to supporting your long term personal success with your blog. I will help you understand the pro's and con's of starting your blog and how to make sure you will be successful as a blog publisher.

How To Blog 103 - Choosing the Right Blogging Tools and Software

In this article you will learn about several available software tools that will allow you to start blogging quickly and easily. There is a huge list of blog software available and the lists seems to grow daily. This article will discuss a handful of tools that I've found useful. You will learn how to determine which tools are right for you and how to use these tools properly.

How To Blog 104 - Publishing Your First Blog Article

Blogs are fantastic publishing tools and are very simple to use. Your blog posts or articles are the meat of your blog. You will learn how to publish your first blog article and how to publish articles that will attract search engines and readers alike.

How To Blog 105 - How To Promote Your Blog

For any web-based content you want to attract search engines and readers. This article will discuss promotional techniques that will increase visibility for your blog and help spread the word about your corner of the internet. You will need to generate traffic to your blog and this article will point you in the right direction.

How To Blog 106 - Blogging For A Living

This article will disuss blogging as part of your lifestyle. To be a successful blogger takes time and committment. You will have to nurture and cultivate your blog. This article will discuss some of the issues you may face as a long term blogger and provide direction on proper expectations and results from your blog.

This series of articles will be published every other day starting on tomorrow. I encourage you to check back and enjoy this series.